Five mistakes to avoid when marketing through online communities

If you have a product or service that you think most people or a large percentage of the people in an online community would find interesting, I think you should delve right in and give it a shot. After all, isn’t one of the goals behind marketing in online communities to essentially capitalize on the sheer numbers and niche topics?

If done right, it can be quite effective. If done wrong, as it most often is in my opinion, it can backfire in a way that can turn ugly fast. I’ve seen it time and time again. A well-intentioned individual joins the community and casually starts mentioning their travel site or automotive services complete with links in every post and the promise of a discount.

What often happens next is they receive a slew of comments from the natives about the community not being a place to sell their services and it’s all downhill from there.
I once saw a user upload 750 images of wristwatches. Seriously. It was his entire catalog. Need I say what happened to him?

I call it the scarlet letter, “S.” it stands for SPAM. It’s a word you don’t want to be associated with in an online community. Trust me. So, before you jump right in to the next community, here are five things you shouldn’t do. Remember, this isn’t the do list, it’s the don’t list.

Don’t:

Add links to your website in every single blog and comment you post.

Write blogs with titles like: “Great deals on travel” and only mention your organization. It’s the quickest way to illustrate a lack of genuine interest in the community.

Start blogging about your product or service the minute you create a profile. It will be noticed.

Misrepresent yourself as a satisfied customer, just to convince others to get on board.

Disrespect the culture of the community. Take time to see how things work before you jump in and shake things up.

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11 comments

Very nice article Angela! You couldn’t be more right about the people that join a community just to bomb it with their junk in hopes of nailing a conversion. It reminds me of what it looks like when a used car salesman moves from the parking lot to the internet to try and sell his inventory. Harsh lesson….

I disagree that the slew of community posts affirming their tolerance for (or against) advertising is “all down hill”. It’s very positive that the community is voicing their standards. If the community host takes action that affirms the community standards. It can become a positive cycle. Of course, each community is a little different so where the bar is set and what actions are appropriate will vary.

For 7 years, I managed a community where I had to balance the non-profit’s zero tolerance for spam against a well-defined target audience’s genuine need for product and service recommendations and reviews.

Through a combination of setting policy, fostering edge cases toward deeper community participation (#5 on your list) and being transparent about policy and how it’s handled in general (but not by calling any individuals out), I reached a point where I was getting notices of spam from the community before I had a chance to catch it myself (and I was being emailed every first-time post).

The immediate effect was that there were few examples of posts that would indicate “here is a place you can spam without participating” which discouraged but the most blatant/desperate/sleaziest. The longer term effect was that it empowered the community to handle edge cases and encourage deeper engagement. It shared the load and reinforced our goals for hosting a community.

As an aside, I’m torn about teaching people how to effectively market to a community unless you truly belong to said community. 🙂

@Scott Moore You raise great points. It has been my experience that it’s downhill when the intentions were solely to market and not to learn the community. It sounds as though you made major inroads finding a balance during your 7 years as a community manager and your. I suspect that some people did come around and eventually “truly belong” to the community. People don’t realize the time it takes to d that, but it can be very effective and I think it’s worth it on many levels.

[…] Okay, so your ready to hit the ground running and begin your marketing camaign that you are sure is going to be the biggest hit ever! But have you really sat down and contemplated all aspects of your campaign and marketing in general? Below are a few online marketing mistakes to avoid that will save you time and money recently suggested on Online Community Strategist. […]

[…] Okay, so your ready to hit the ground running and begin your marketing camaign that you are sure is going to be the biggest hit ever! But have you really sat down and contemplated all aspects of your campaign and marketing in general? Below are a few online marketing mistakes to avoid that will save you time and money recently suggested on Online Community Strategist. […]

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